


crystalline

by kellycore



Category: Better Call Saul (TV), Breaking Bad
Genre: Canon Divergent, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Mental Illness, Recovery, Slow Burn, Smoking, Spoilers, Traumatized!Jesse, legalese, post season five
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-03-17 17:47:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18970009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kellycore/pseuds/kellycore
Summary: Jesse finds Saul, because, after everthing (Jane, Mike, dead bodies in the basement, the cold metal of a gun to your forehead, money so insurmountable, blood that's not yours), he's the only person in the entire world who gets what it's like to have been ruined by Walter White.[On hold for now; I’m too excited about El Camino to write anything Good and Normal for this! Thank you for reading!]





	1. Confession Tape

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mybabyblue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mybabyblue/gifts).



> First thing: Read at your own risk. Anything that has occurred in Breaking Bad might be in this fic, and I will not be including a trigger warning for specific triggers unless it is requested, to avoid spoiling my own writing. Also, I have only watched up to season three of Better Call Saul, so any discrepancies are totally on me. I will be veering off the track and writing my own events for this story.
> 
> Second thing: This fic is dedicated to Mybabyblue for the lovely comments they left on my other Breaking Bad fic! Thank you!
> 
> Third (and final) thing: There are spoilers. Please don't read this if you don't enjoy spoilers. It is also a Saul/Jesse slash fic. Both characters are consenting adults.
> 
> Thank you!

 

 

 

> **"What is that you express in your eyes? It seems more to me than all the print I have read in my life."**
> 
> **- Walt Whitman**
> 
>  
> 
> * * *
> 
>  

 

Saul-- Gene, sorry-- never had been big on vices. Of course, that had been before cracked ribs and burner phones, back when the worst he had done was pretend to be something he was not (hurt). He did not need to pretend now, with a cartridge of Parliaments resting on the counter, on top of the array of multicoloured lotto tickets.

 “You bring it?” The owner of the gas station regularly employed his son, a baby-faced teen named Cody, who reminded Saul a bit too much of himself as an adolescent, back when he still had good knees and a hunger for money, for _more_ , that had never quite been quenched.

 Saul fished the industrial sized sachet of nutmeg out of his backpack. He didn’t carry a briefcase anymore; those were for accomplished people, not the middle-aged man counting your change for minimum wage. “Don’t do it all in one go, okay? You’re no goddamned Tony Montana, kid.”

 Cody nodded, even though he would probably blow through the whole bag in a week alongside his wannabe druggie buddies, and passed Saul the cigarettes. “I won’t. Thanks.”

 And that would have been his Friday night, that and a bit of scotch and some taped reruns, if it weren’t for Jesse Pinkman, slouched on his doorstep.

 Saul ran his calloused fingers over the fragmented bridge of his nose, and took in a heavy sigh. He had finally settled into something, a routine, a life, and here came Jesse Pinkman, who's face was still plastered on missing posters. Jesse was what lawyers called a liability, an explosion waiting to happen. But the kid had already made it this far, and if he didn’t at least talk to him… well, it wasn’t like Jesse had anything left, did he? That would stop him from calling the cops?

 “You smoke?” Jesse said, not even looking up from his scuffed, bloody sneakers. The packet of Parliaments was sweaty in Saul’s hands.

 “We all have our vices, alright? And I’m going to guess, Mr. Crystal, that these cancer sticks are probably better for your health than whatever chemicals you cooked up in that R.V.” Yeah, it was mean, but Jesse had probably just spent the last chunk of the calendar partying his ass off, right? From the indignant sigh that came from the kid, he had guessed correctly. But still, he had to play it safe. The last time they had seen each other, Jesse had cracked his nose and basically, had been out for blood. “Fine, I’m sorry. It was a stupid joke. Come inside and we- and we can talk.”

 Jesse followed wordlessly, entering the doorway and taking off his sneakers quietly, clamoring them into the corner. Saul took off his coat and stuffed it in the empty closet that still smelled a bit like a new house, all paint and chemical. It burned, in a good way.

 “Wanna beer?” Saul offered, looking through the dismal contents of his fridge. A six pack of Pabst, a forgotten jar of pasta sauce, and a jar of pickled carrots. He would have to go shopping if Jesse was-- was staying.

 “I don’t drink.” Jesse spat, like he’d just offered him cyanide. “Saul, I made-- I made a confession tape about what Mr. White did, with his brother in law. That’s not enough for them to… to find me, is it?”

 Saul froze. A confession tape meant people. It meant naming names. It meant the cops finding a weak link and knocking on his front porch and him sitting in the slammer, proving Chuck right.

 “Jesse, do you remember if my name was ever said on this confession tape?”

 “Yeah, once or twice,” Jesse said, looking down at the carpeting in Saul’s living room like it was the most interesting thing in the world. “Didn’t you change your name, though? To Gene whatever?”

 “Yeah.” God. Saul took a deep breath and tried not to scare the kid. That would get him nowhere. “I need to know what you said about me, Jesse.”

 “I just said that you were our lawyer. And that you kept track of the money and shit. That’s all, I swear.” Jesse’s voice rose nervously with every passing syllable.

 “Okay. Okay. I can work with that.” Saul’s mind raced. They wouldn’t go straight for him, would they? No, first Jesse, but they still thought that he was six feet under the sand, which left, well, no one. On the news, he’d heard that Lydia was dead, and the Todd kid too, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that Mike was a goner, if the feds decided to look that far back. It was just the two of them left.

 “You’re not mad?” Jesse asked, with wide, skittish eyes. Chuck eyes, Saul thought. All big and round and _scared_. Maybe he hadn’t been on a bender for the last couple of months. Maybe something else had transpired, to make him this jittery.

 “No,” Saul said, uncapping his beer, and taking a heavy sip. “I’m not mad.” Jesse flinched when Saul raised his arm to toss the tab into the garbage, and Saul felt his face fall, just a little. What had Walter White done to him? “We can figure out what they know and go from there.”

 

* * *

 

Saul needed a cigarette. He offered Jesse, who shook his head vehemently, but still joined him on his back porch. It was cold out, now, on the fringes of summer, and whenever he exhaled, working his way through a good third of the pack, his breath came out in a foggy cloud of white.

 “Another thing,” he recalled. “How’d you find me?

 Jesse kicked his legs uncomfortably against the deck before answering. He didn’t look high to Saul, but he seemed in a trance. Like he was sleepwalking through life. “I asked Ed. He, uh, disappeared me.”

 “I thought you would have picked somewhere more exciting.” Saul commented. He was on his second beer, now, and feeling warmer, more ambient. A cigarette rested wantonly between his lips, hot and smoky. “Alaska, Belize, Canada. Lots of pretty ladies. You’re missing out on a bunch of touch-starved Alaskan girls, kid.”

 “Yeah, well I guess I’m fucking stupid, aren’t I?” Jesse snapped. “Don’t give me shit. I came here, to Shittown, U.S.A, to tell you about the tape. I didn’t have to. I could have told my cop buddy that you laundered money, and poisoned Brock, you dick!”

 “Jesse… I didn’t-- _Walter_ , I tried to stop him.” He stuttered, standing up nervously. Jesse was shaking, his arms shoved into the pockets of his jacket. “You gotta believe me, Jess--”

 “Don’t call me Jess, bitch.” His chest rose rapidly, even under the layers of t-shirts he wore. Jesse had always been skinny, but he now possessed a nearly skeletal quality that you couldn’t get from a few forgotten meals. His collarbones would’ve made runway models jealous.

 “The neighbours.” Saul hissed. “Go to bed, and you can yell at me in the morning, alright?” The subdivision Saul lived in was a newly remodeled relic from the seventies, full of stoner college students and oldies still holding onto their properties. It was a perfect blend of uncaring people, all too wrapped up in their personal lives to notice a resemblance between Gene’s face and that Better Call Saul guy that always used to be on T.V.

 Jesse calmed at the mention of the neighbours, his forehead still beaded with sweat. Saul could sleep on his couch tonight, and Jesse could have the bed. It was easier that way, because Saul had work, unless he called out, but still, he was accustomed to waking up early. He showed Jesse the bathroom, and gave him a pair of pajamas that would swim on him, because the kid barely had anything from the looks of it, and decided he would have to go grocery shopping in the morning.

 “Uh, thanks for everything.” Jesse mumbled. The t-shirt and sweatpants Saul’d given him were baggy, like all of the kid’s other clothes, but they were warm and not blood-covered.

 “No problem. I’ll be, uh, on the couch if you need me.” God, his knees were going to _kill_ him in the morning.

 “If you don’t got another bed, it’s fine if you stay here.” Jesse offered. The bed was a king and way too expansive for one person, unless they were Huell-sized. Saul felt almost advantageous about accepting, but he was exhausted from work and his body felt stiff, and so Saul found himself crawling under the covers, still in a starched pair of jeans and an AC/DC shirt. He’d decided that Gene Takovic was the type of guy to listen to old rock. Saul made a point to not touch Jesse, and so, with his body angled tightly to the right, he slept peacefully for the first time in months.

  
  
  



	2. If One Should Fall, The Other Follows In

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! TW for trauma, specifically sexual! Also, the title is from “The Hole”, by Glen Phillips. It’s from BB!

Jesse woke up with Saul Goodman on his side of the bed, his body spread like a starfish. Christ. He glanced around the room with heavy trepidation. Jesse couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept in a bed without conditions, without the sound of a belt buckle snapping or Todd’s voice.

[Jess. C’mon. I’m the only thing that’s good for you. I saved you, Jess. You were… addicted. You were a junkie. A hot junkie mess. Mr. White’s little crackwhore, weren’t you?]

He took a heavy breath. Saul wasn’t like that. A sociopath, like Mr. White and Todd and Gus and… and pretty  
much everyone he’d had the pleasure of meeting; even Mike had been detached, compartmentalized. Or he was damn good at hiding it. They both had something at stake. Something that made them alike: a druggie and his lawyer. A criminal and a criminal, beat, lawyer. 

[Then his pants would fall to the floor. Todd would grab Jesse by the chin with calloused hands; tilt his head up. He smelled like heavy cologne and Irish Spring; a dizzying spiral of covering up whatever was underneath. You’re so good, Todd would say, so good for me.]

And anyway, he had the gun if he needed it. A pistol he’d found in the backseat of the car that he’d escaped in. It had been a week since he’d been in New Mexico, but his chest caught at the memory like it had just happened. He had traversed the desert, all the way to Omaha, in radio silence, only pausing to pull into gas station parking lots and tumble into a restless sleep. He’d been running for so long, always going, always looking over his shoulder— it was weird to just stop. 

Finally, with a bone-cracking stretch, Saul unceremoniously awoke. “Jesus, what time is it?”

“7:02,” Jesse muttered. One of the worst things about being there, in the compound, was the boredom. When he was a kid, a problem child, someone who looked for trouble like it was oxygen and he was asphyxiating, his teachers had always asked him if he was bored. If he needed something to do, something to keep him occupied. In the pit, there had been nothing to occupy his mind, just the same stretch of apricot sand and whatever conglomeration of junk Todd had been gracious enough to throw down. He would read food labels obsessively, practice his times tables in his head, try to remember bits of old T.V shows— anything to remind himself that there was a way out of this; that he could be saved.

“I’m not even going to bother calling in.”

“What do you mean, calling in? I thought you didn’t do that Better Call Saul shit anymore?” Jesse asked. Sometimes, Todd would let him inside, if he was feeling particularly bored that day. There, on his minuscule T.V, they would watch news recaps of the search for Heisenberg. He hadn’t seen a single garish commercial, and well, since Saul had gotten out of ABQ, Jesse had just assumed that he cut the shitty home movies too.

“No, I can’t do law.” Saul said. “If I did, I would have to go back to school. And lemme tell you, I am never going through the Bar again.” He laughed blithely.

“That sucks.” Jesse agreed. His stomach growled ignorantly, and he thought back to the last time he’d eaten. It hadn’t been yesterday, no, yesterday he’d driven without stopping, at ten above the speed limit; Mike had once told him over a hot cup of coffee and syrupy waffles that you could go that much above what the signs said without getting pulled over, unless the cop was on a power trip. 

“You wanna get something to eat?” Saul offered. He crawled out of the bed awkwardly, ignoring the symphonic creak as he rested his weight on the floor. 

“Uh. If you want to. It’s up to you.”

“We can get take-out. I’m not spilling my guts in a diner with gossip-hungry waitresses. No proof that I collaborated with you. If it comes to a court of law.” Saul said, dropping his jeans as he did.

Jesse sucked a deep breath in.

“No, no! I didn’t mean it like that. They probably think that we’re sleeping six feet under, y’know?” He tried, his face contorted into a sad smile.

“Agent Schrader said—“

“But he’s dead, isn’t he?” Saul said. “Walter White killed him. And Walt’s still alive, Jesse, so I swear to you that they’re pinning that asshole to the cross. They’re not going to be fishing for accomplices while they still got him.”

“He’s alive.” Jesse breathed out. It came out more like a statement than a question. God. Saul had to be kidding, Mr. White had been shot, he’d fucking bled on Jesse’s shirt, and on the ground, and stained the sand crimson when Jesse’d dragged him from the house to the lab. He had to be dead. 

“Yeah, they put a chokehold on the press, but I have my ways.” Saul paused and flashed a painful, awkward smile. He imagined Saul doing the same apologetic grin to his clients in court, right before they were declared guilty and carted off to prison— just like Jesse would be if Walter tipped them off.  
“Checked the Albuquerque death records for a month. And I know a guy who knows a guy.”

“God. I thought— I mean, he was so weak.” Jesse mumbled. “He was sick, the chemo wasn’t working.”

“Yeah, well, he’s like a cat. Got nine lives.” With a pair of worn Levi’s hanging off of his legs, and a dorky white band shirt clinging to his bulky frame, Saul looked completely different than the charismatic, conniving lawyer that had once saved his ass. He looked like a small town nobody. Jesse didn’t want to know what he looked like. 

“No, when he saved me. He was like, coughing and shit. And then he got shot, right by his bad lung.” He hated himself for knowing which side was Mr. White’s bad one (his right). “By his own gun.”

“He got shot?” Saul frowned. “Jesse, if you shot him—“

“I didn’t shoot him. You remember Todd Alquist, right?”

Saul sat down uncomfortably next to Jesse, leaving a wide berth of beige comforter between them. “Yeah, what about him? I always thought there was something off about that kid.”

“Uh, we lured Mr. White into the desert. Me and the cops, after I made the tape. But he called for backup, from Todd’s gang. And they killed him. Agent Schrader and his buddy.”

“He killed them?” Saul stood abruptly, and Jesse flinched. There was an awkward pause before Saul walked neatly towards the nightstand and retrieved a notepad and paper.

“No, the Nazis. Todd, and his gang. And I— I woulda made it out. I was hiding under this car during the shootout. But Mr. White,uh, told them where I was. Called me a… a coward.”

Saul scribbled rapidly. Prev. granted plea deal. Emotional damages. Abusive relationship. Client was not of sound mind. Jesse wanted to feel angry at the notes, written like he was just another person sitting in the sweaty faux-leather seats of Saul’s waiting room. He wanted to feel something. But just as quickly as his emotions surfaced, they also seemed to disappear in the blink of an eye.

“They took me back. They tortured me. With like, hooks and shit. Let’s just say that I wasn’t fucking partying.” Jesse hated his reactionless he was. Usually small things, like the jingle of a dog chain or the whine of a kitchen knife were enough to trigger him. But saying it out loud was like reading from a chemistry textbook. “Can we, uh, take a break?“ He felt disgusted with himself.

“Yeah, totally.” Saul said, his face frozen. “Jesse, you take it easy. Okay? Ask me; just ask if you need anything.”

“Yeah, sorry.” He apologized. God, this was so… fucked. Saul had been safe. He had been okay. The cops weren’t in pursuit of him, they didn’t want an accomplice; they wanted his other half. His partner, and whoever they could take down with him. No matter what Saul said, Jesse knew that they were looking for him, especially after the tape.

“Don’t be sorry.” Saul said. “Now, let’s eat. I’m starving.”

Jesse had to hold back a bitter laugh. Starving. Yeah, right. His hands felt as cold as the gun in the car.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please review if you
> 
>  
> 
> a) liked it  
> b) loved it  
> c) hated it and think it’s terrible!!!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, please review if you hated/loved/anything-in-betweened it. Have a good day!
> 
> Also, for all intensive purposes, these characters are not mine and don't belong to me. Don't do nutmeg, kids.


End file.
